Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Tapioca Pudding
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the base
In a bowl, mix the tapioca with ½ quart of the milk while cold.
Add the butter and heat over medium until it boils.
Assemble and bake
Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.
Add the remaining milk, sweeten to taste, and stir in the beaten eggs.
Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Tapioca
- Its starch swells when heated and thickens the milk into a pudding.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens and the eggs set into.
- Eggs
- Set during baking, giving the pudding body and a custard-like richness.
- Butter
- Adds fat, which contributes richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
The step that matters
Heating the tapioca mixture to a full boil. Tapioca starch granules only swell and thicken the milk once they are hot enough. If the mixture does not reach a full boil, the pudding can stay thin or grainy.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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